This blog will cover the collision of two cultures - parents and teen children. They don't understand us, and view us as spoilers or walking ATMs (adults with teen malcontents?) We are left wondering what happened to our cute cuddly kids of a few years back, and when they may return. If ever.

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Saturday, January 5, 2008

Allowance, or no allowance?

I pay my daughter an allowance. $7.50 a week. But sometimes, when she comes up to me in a charming pout, asking for the moola, I'm tempted to be a hard ass.

Usually she has not cleaned her room, helped me with one dinner during the week, cleaned or bathroom or fed the cats. Okay, forget the cats, but the rest of the stuff, I really want her to do. So I say, do the room, the dinner and your bathroom, and get back to me.

With a huff, she's off, and usually gets two out of three. I'm still working on the dinner. Now when I was 14 (I won't bore you with the 5 miles through the snowdrift stuff) I was cleaning up the dishes every night, mowing the lawn, keeping my room clean and weeding the gardens. I think I was supposed to clean out the catbox as well, but I usually managed to skip that.

So, back to my daughter. Do I withhold the cash? I think the answer is yes. It's just hard to be consistent about the entire affair.

And then there's the scenario when she asks for an advance on her allowance. Then I have visions of her running up a $5,000 credit card balance by the time she's 18. So I usually nix that.

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Alien Nation

About Me (short version)

This blog will chronicle my journey through the tween and early teen years with my middle school daughter. You'll also be reading posts from other parents, who swear their children have been abducted by aliens, and have returned home..different.

A short synopsis of Barbara Clements. I'm a happily married, South King County mom with one daughter, and hope to someday freelance full-time as a writer for National Geographic. But until then, I have a daughter to raise and get through high school, which she'll hopefully leave in four years with a scholarship, my sanity intact and not pregnant.